Families reveal stories of Soviet Army soldiers for the Great Patriotic War

The people of the former USSR will never forget the Great Patriotic War. A boundless amount of information has been finding its way onto the Internet. The only things lacking online have been faces and stories of the Red Army soldiers until now.

Бессмертного полка is filling in that gap to bring faces and stories of the average Soviet Army soldier. It’s easy to find this material on the soldiers who were most notable in the Great Patriotic War.

Now, the average and proud Soviet Army soldiers are being remembered with photos and stories by their living relatives on Бессмертного полка. Maybe I should say LIVING RELATIVES one more time.

This is not just some website with a list of soldiers and their divisions. It’s an opportunity to find living relatives of family disconnected by the war.

Copy and paste the translated keywords into the search box here and click on искать. If results are not found, slowly reduce the number of keywords for the soldier being researched.

When the results appear, copy and paste them into Google Translate to see which results would be most useful.

If the website is intimidating in Russian, use this technique: translated name of solider and their place of residence into Google with site:http://moypolk.ru/. For example: Иванов Кострома site:http://moypolk.ru/ Then follow step 3.

To contact the person who posted a page, click on the name next to Координатор on the right that is above МЫ В СОЦСЕТЯХ (for the social network images). That person is the organizer for the region where that soldier lived.

Family also can be found by copying keywords from the soldier’s page such as full name, Родился (born) then date, д. (abbreviation for village) then the village’s name, and медали (medals) and pasting those keywords into Google.

Make that extra effort and it could result in discovering an incredible amount of information on those long, lost relatives.

Search this blog

The genealogy gods had a good laugh at me last weekend. I have been so frustrated by being unable to “find” the marriage record of my 4th great-grandparents from Russian Poland. After all the success I’ve had with researching my German ancestors who moved to Russian Poland in the late 19th century, I hired a … Continue reading A shocking surprise was waiting […]

I thought I hit the jackpot when I found my great-great-great-grandfather’s death record on an Ancestry database. That was just the beginning of a journey to break down a brickwall I never expected to crumble. I got the family tree of my ancestors who lived in Russian Poland 8 years ago from a German cousin. … Continue reading Journey to find one record brea […]

I thought the life of my great-great-great-grandfather Ferdinand Oswald Bleschke was completely researched. Obtaining his death record was on the side burner because I assumed it couldn’t offer anything new. I was in for quite a surprise when I found the record on Ancestry.com’s new database, Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany [Poland], Selected Civil Vita […]

I just was thinking about contacting my cousin from my great-grandfather’s brother’s family to see whether they have any more old family photos. They already shared some old photos, family letters and documents over the past seven years. I am so grateful to find the family. They really found me on a genealogy forum. I … Continue reading An incredible surpris […]

Many of my relatives can tell me the story of how one brother of my grandmother got separated from his four brothers and a sister as they boarded trains during WWII. The families got on any train that had breathing room but Grand Uncle Dimitri was the only one to not make it to Austria. … Continue reading Unknown immigrant database completes family story of […]